As pretty as thas is, this is Slashdot and I'd have expected one or more of the following features:

(1) Internet connection
(2) Out of circuit, redundant internet connection
(3) A link to some DHS Threat Level status source with automated update of the status on the device
(4) some stupid social networking linkage (since it's so bloody ubiquitous...)

Just as soon as there is something similar in other countries, expect a LOT of people to get on twitter to organise dissent.

Not necessarily. Once a country gains the capacity not merely to block Twitter/Facebook/Whatever (that's too simple) but to trace the messages back to their sources - not necessarily on the day or in real time - then it's game over. If you know that the goons will come knocking at three in the morning, you'll be loathe to use the likes of TwitBook.

What's needed is a truly secure solution - because we know that the bad guys are likely to find needles in the haystack...

"Conclusion: Steve Jobs was right; flash doesn't belong on phones and I'm glad he is killing it, even if he is still an annoying control freak."

How about just make Flash work on phones - in the very, very near future, I will stop carrying a notebook or a netbook with me. Billions of others round the world will never buy a netbook - but they will buy a powerful phone. The argument for making any platform mobile is too strong.

You'll need an IP lawyer to tell you whether this approach is legal. And this might cost you more than whatever you might have to pay the original client in order to get a licence or share of the original IP. Seems a terrible waste of effort to reverse engineer and code from the ground up.

Unless of course the original client is Microsoft and the product is Vista. In which case, off you go.....

Posted
by
timothy
on Friday February 26, 2010 @08:56PM
from the only-need-half-as-many dept.

PCM2 writes "ABC News is reporting that the US Secret Service is in dire need of server upgrades. 'Currently, 42 mission-oriented applications run on a 1980s IBM mainframe with a 68 percent performance reliability rating,' says one leaked memo. That finding was the result of an NSA study commissioned by the Secret Service to evaluate the severity of their computer problems. Curiously, upgrades to the Service's computers are being championed by Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who says he's had 'concern for a while' about the issue."

Posted
by
kdawson
on Tuesday February 02, 2010 @11:03PM
from the like-a-banana dept.

Ant notes a piece up on WBUR Boston addressing theories to explain the universal human experience that time seems to pass faster as you get older. Here's the 9-minute audio (MP3). Several explanations are tried out: that brains lay down more information for novel experiences; that the "clock" for nerve impulses in aging brains runs slower; and that each interval of time represents a diminishing fraction of life as we age.

"The researchers first levitated a young mouse, just three-week-old and weighing 10 grams. It appeared agitated and disoriented, seemingly trying to hold on to something. 'It actually kicked around and started to spin, and without friction, it could spin faster and faster, and we think that made it even more disoriented,' said researcher Yuanming Liu, a physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. They decided to mildly sedate the next mouse they levitated, which seemed content with floating. "

I'm generally disoriented when spinning without friction. And generally content once mildly sedated.